Tracey Trance - Keep It Up 7" (All Gone, 2015)
I know almost nothing about this release or Tracey Trance in general, but I was in Boston once on tour or something and rolled through Deep Thoughts to holler at Andy Brown from SKIMASK while he was working there. He kept insisting that I take his personal copy of this 7" and that I couldn't leave the store without it. I said "ok cool, yea I liked that Intended 7" on this label. I think it's the Tyvek dude's other thing?" and he said something along the lines of "yea, those bands are all mad boring, but you're gonna love it this" lol. Anyway, he was right in that it was good. Grabbed the last little stack of dead-stock from Chris at All Gone recently.
Lo-fi, nervous gutter-glam from the homespun underworld of similarly "other" labels like Feeding Tube, Night People, Not Not Fun, One Kind Favor, etc. Think of a more paint fume-fried Gary Wilson for the modern northeast basement commune noise hole generation.
"Describing Trance’s one-man-band schtick and naif vocal presence always seem like they’d be annoying when they’re described to me, but I am here to tell you the opposite is true. Indeed, the more I hear Tracey’s casio/guitar/thumper attack, and his Poindexter-on-helium vocals, the deeper the elemental quality of his simply-wrought hooks burrows into my brain. The riff/lyric construction may put some in mind of Daniel Johnston’s early work, and I’m sure that was an influence on the guy, but most of the material here also has a lazy stoner surrealism that Johnston’s manic approach lacked. There’s no question but that Trance’s decision to work in this particular milieu is conscious and culturally-informed, but he still manages to invest the shit with a genuine weirdness that will not be stopped." - Byron Coley